Infection
by Olethros
Summary: Post 2004 movie. Grieving from Christine's departure, Erik finds that he must offer penance in a most painful and unexpected manner. And as always, nothing is as it seems.
1. Infection

A/N: This story opens up uncharted territory for me. It's the first time I've ventured anywhere near E/OW and my first attempt at an OC. But even with that said, I've thrown in quite a few surprises in here that should provide ample entertainment in the weeks to come. The last thing I plan to do is create another cliched Erik-saves-injured-girl-in-his-cellars-and-she-happens-to-have-a-gorgeous-voice-and-helps-Erik-forget-all-about-Christine knock-off.

Rated "T" for a slight squik factor. If you are at all squeamish, consider yourself forewarned.

Fatihful readers of "Labyrinth", fear not! I have not abandonned that story and have actually almost finished the next chapter. But the muse simply demanded that I get this story into writing. And I can guarantee that updates for this fic will come much quicker, it shouldn't be more than a couple of chapters and I've already written about half of it.

Disclaimer: Not mine, except Theresa.

Endless gratitude for beta-extraordinare Le Chat Noir for all her aid in both beta-ing and coming up with plot ideas!

.o.o.o.o.o.o..

**Infection**

**Chapter 1

* * *

**

It had been four weeks.

Four long, empty, mind-numbing weeks spent riffling through the scraps of what had once been his home. Pieces of pipe organ, scraps of lush Persian velvet, and chunks of stone mixed indiscriminately amongst the rubble as the waters of the lake lapped ceaselessly against the blackened stone and sand of the shore.

He had made a new mask out of scraps of cloth and leather, whatever he could find. It sat in all its patchwork glory across the full of his face, leaving only his eyes, mouth and chin visible. He had learned at last that the size of the infection had never mattered--it cursed his entire being.

He had not emerged from the shelter of his ruined domain for these four weeks. He did not allow any news of the other world to reach his ears. The only way he knew the length of time that had passed was by watching the rate at which the candles providing him with dim, guttering light burned down their lengths. But even those soon dwindled in supply and eventually he faced the inevitable task of venturing up a few levels to collect more from the storerooms.

He thought nothing of the people that he might encounter once there. His world had very handily dwindled down to the most basic of his needs. Food, water, a snatched breath of sleep. Even music was a fond but distant memory. It was a pleasantly painless way to live.

He returned from the storerooms with boxes of candles and some food in his arms. He had seen no one on his journey, and he blithely ignored the gnawing disappointment in his chest. He had barely taken two turns when he heard the noise.

It was a muffled, hoarse cough followed by a wheezing breath that sounded as if it were being dragged over sandpaper. The sound came from the ground. Unbidden, his hand tightened around the Punjab lasso within his cloak, even though he knew from the start that the sound was clearly made by something with no capacity to harm him.

There was no light. He had long ago memorized the tunnels of his labyrinth so that he could walk them blind at will. He took one of the candles from the box and lit it, allowing the flare to fill his vision before the light shrunk to the tiny flickering flame of the candle. There was a raw gasp and the sound of an arm being thrown over a face.

He brought the candle down and the light revealed to him a figure huddled on the ground with its back to the wall. It was dressed in baggy clothing appropriate to an indiscriminate sex. The candlelight reflected brightly in the eyes that peeked around the hand over the face.

An intruder, he thought…an intruder who should even now tremble at being discovered by the monstrous Phantom of the Opera. Four weeks was not nearly long enough for them to forget about him. He would tremble and scream, or curse him, and remind him once again that he had not yet become enough of a shadow to avoid being hated by the world still…

"What the hell are you doing here?" The voice was labored and slightly metallic, although he could still hear a residual musical clarity. It was unmistakably female. It was angry.

He sucked in a quick breath as fury surged through his blood. "Excuse me?" He had not spoken for four weeks but no one would have known if they had heard those ice-cold words slip from his lips, as fluid as poison.

"You're dead. Your gruesome end is all over the papers. You're dead and I'm…" she gave an experimental cough. "I'm not…yet."

"That can easily be arranged," he hissed sibilantly, letting the tailored malice in his voice mask his growing nervousness. Who the devil was this woman, helpless in his domain, and mad enough not to fear him? Well, she wasn't mad--the glint in her eyes told him that much.

Below her hand, her lips cracked a smile, a subtle movement that he could barely see in the dim light. "Be my guest…sir."

And she lifted her hand away from her face.

The candle trembled in his grasp, but he managed to steady it as he took a step back. His stomach twisted within his gut.

The woman's skin was a mottled shade of grey, green, and black. The sickly colors appeared to radiate from an enormous wound on the right side of her face, clumsily stitched together and showing signs of cracking open. Her veins stood out in sharp relief against the unnatural colors, pulsating softly against the stretched skin. Only the eyes were untouched, they were piercing and wide open, reflecting black in the candlelight.

He had been silent for only two seconds but in that time he knew that he had been staring. She smirked and the effect on her face was ghastly. "You are welcome to bring me to Death, monsieur Phantom, but I would rather He came to get me himself. It's a pretty sight, isn't it? But I wouldn't worry, Phantom, it's not _contagious_."

He cursed himself as he took another involuntary step back.

"But would it matter if I infected you, Phantom?" She inhaled a wheezing breath. "It has been weeks since I last saw your face. Is it more horrendous than the sight you see here?" She smirked again, and laughed, a sound unhinged and pitying at the same time, and something inside of him screamed.

He turned and fled down the passageway.


	2. Fever

**Chapter 2**

He made it only around the corner before grinding to a halt.

What had just _happened_? A woman…her wild eyes…her face…her _face_…

_She's not my responsibility. She got her own fool self into these cellars_. He continued to think this even as he turned and walked back the way he had run.

She was right where he had left her and did not turn her head towards his light as he approached her once more. They looked at each other in silence. At least, he looked at her. She stared at some imaginary distant point in her vision.

"I came here to die, Phantom," she said. "Alone. A properly dramatic, solitary death. And unless you are here to kill me, then you are welcome to continue upon your way."

The tone of her voice was still biting, metallic and sneering, impossibly coherent considering her condition. He realized only now how much obvious effort it was taking her to say them. A thin sheen of sweat covered her grotesque features, and as he watched, she trembled almost imperceptibly.

He had set his boxes down upon the ground before he was even aware that he had come to a decision. She looked up at him in undisguised surprise right before he blew out the candle, plunging them into darkness once more.

His arms found her legs and shoulders on the first attempt. He felt her draw weakly away. He lifted her in his arms; she was impossibly light and she shuddered as she left the ground.

She whimpered low in her throat, and it was a terrified, desperate sound, as if she wished to scream but had no voice to speak. And then she was silent.

He brought his head down towards where he thought hers must be, stopping when he felt the side of his mask touch her thin chest. It was moving but barely. She had fainted dead away.

He walked quickly through the hallways, his mind instinctively leading him to where he knew his boat would be. His foot bumped against the hull in the darkness; he laid the woman down in the bottom of the boat before getting in and poling them quickly across the lake.

The glowing lights from his remaining candles told him that he had reached his home. Lifting her easily once again, he stepped onto his shore and stopped dead.

_Where can I take her? Certainly not…there. The floor? No, I am not such a barbarian._ The thought stopped him. _I am not?_

The raised dais where his model of the opera house used to be was empty. He flung a scrap of what was formerly his carpet over it and then laid the woman down upon it. A bowl filled with cold water from the lake and a threadbare towel he laid at her side for when she woke. As a final thought, he ran into the other room, where the pieces of the swan bed were scattered across the floor. He grabbed several of the remaining, torn pillows and returned to slide them under her back and head, propping her up and doing his best to clear her airway. She was barely breathing and when she did, her lungs made terrible sounds.

He had a sudden, violent vision of himself pushing against her chest with punishing force as her silent eyes gazed back at him in befuddlement. _Live, damn you! I will not let you die…_

The vision was gone as soon as it had come and he shook his head as if waking from a deep sleep. Several more candles provided enough light for him to finally see her clearly.

She was thin, painfully so. That much was obvious even from the baggy clothes that she wore, which he could see now had most likely been stolen from the costume rooms. Her hair was wild and about shoulder length, and streaked with so much dirt and grime that he could not tell what color it had once been.

And her face…he felt something turn inside his stomach once more as he looked at it. Was it strange to feel such repulsion? Had he truly become a hypocrite so easily?

No…he was repulsed because he knew that this atrocity was not natural. The gaping wound told him that much. The cut ran from the corner of her right eye to her lips, straining against its dirty stitches. It was gangrene, and from the state of her face, it had reached its final stages.

She shifted and a soft whimper escaped her twisted lips. He was struck suddenly by how young she was. Her figure and the contours of her face visible beneath the infection belonged to a woman in her early-20s at most.

Involuntarily, a surge of an emotion he could not name rushed through him. Her statement about seeing his face had not escaped his notice. She belonged to the opera. He couldn't remember who she was. _How could this have happened to her? How could I not have known about it?_ Her French was good but her voice, hoarse and scraping though it was, betrayed a faint Irish accent.

Almost as quickly as they had started, his thoughts ground to a halt. What was happening? Four weeks ago, he had made a promise to live out the rest of his miserable non-existence away from all human contact. And yet now, with hardly even a _thought_ otherwise, he had taken in yet another woman in need of his help.

"Bloody hell…" He passed his hand over his patchwork mask in frustration, irritated that he could not knead his temples through the cloth. At least this one would not stay very long; she had a few hours at most…maybe a day.

His eyes moved down to her neck. The shirt was buttoned too close to her throat. He reached down and released the top two buttons, leaving her throat exposed and felt her lungs fill once again with air. His hand brushed against a chain around her neck. Almost mechanically, he lifted the chain away from her shirt and considered the locket dangling from its end.

It was the sturdy, bronze type that could be opened and filled with pictures of parents, or perhaps a lover or husband.

The locket cracked open to reveal the face of a young woman.

Even in the guttering light of the candles, he could see that she had once been beautiful. Her chin was pointed, her cheekbones high yet muted in the softness of her face. Long willowy hair so light it was almost white fell from her head in waves and curls. Brilliant green eyes stared back at him, eyes so much like his own…with a similar hardness that belied the youth of her features.

There was a scrap of paper tucked against the locket hinge and he trapped it carefully between his fingers before it fell. He turned it over to read words written in plain, un-flowery script.

_This should help you have the stomach to bury me.  
Theresa O'Leary_

He was right; she was Irish. A wave of anger overtook him as he considered the flippant message that he was sure was meant to be her last words. _How could she?_ She could not have been wounded more than a month ago. Before then, someone like her must have had friends, family, a lover…people who would surely noticed her absence.

_I came here to die, Phantom. Alone. A properly dramatic, solitary death._

A woman like she once was didn't die alone. She had family and friends. She lived in the sunshine. She didn't crawl into the cellars like an animal, and she shouldn't be in the house of a masked madman.

Suddenly he felt as if he were about to be sick. That had been closest in a month he had come to thinking about…her. The locket fell from his nerveless fingers and thudded against the woman's chest.

She blinked and stirred. It was too late for him to run. He held himself stiffly as he waited for her to realize his presence. She blinked again as her eyes came into focus and she saw him. She shuddered. "I fainted, didn't I?" He did not respond. "How sickening."

There was no more anger in her eyes, he noticed, merely what seemed to be grudging resignation. He also noticed that her eyes were the one feature that had not been ravaged by the disease; they remained a bright and piercing green. They watched him now with sudden wariness as he dipped the towel into the bowl of water and handed it to her.

"For you…Miss O'Leary."

She froze, water dripping from the towel to run down her arm. She glanced down once and noticed the locket, open and resting against her shirt. "That was private," she said.

"So were my cellars."

She smirked. "You were supposed to be dead."

He felt the irritation starting to grow within him again as he stared into her sullen eyes. In the time she had spent unconscious, he had almost begun to think of her with…_sympathy_. He had nearly forgotten the appalling way she had greeted him upon being found. Unthinkable really.

"You have quite an unbridled tongue."

She shrugged. "I'm dying, why should I care?" Her eyes moved over to the scrap of paper he still clutched in his hand. "Are you going to put that back or are you waiting for me to keel over so you can do the job yourself?"

"I hardly think either will be necessary. The infection leaves you a day at the most to live and afterwards, the body will need to be cremated to kill any potential bacterial contagions," he said smoothly.

The sentence hung in the air between them like a lead weight and he could feel something within his chest crashing to the floor. _If I ever doubted that I was a monster before…_

Her mouth dropped slightly open as she stared blankly at him. And then the ragged black and green skin of her face stretched to the point of cracking as she laughed once, a sound that rang like a gunshot. "Oh monsieur Phantom, thank you for your _unbridled_ honesty! I suppose that I couldn't get away with treating you like shite without getting some in return, eh?"

He took a quick, almost disbelieving breath. "Be that as it may, Miss O'Leary, it was beyond repugnant for me to say that."

"I don't mind the truth, Phantom. That's all I have left now. What I do mind is your use of my name. It was not for you to know."

He bit back a sharp retort and inclined his head. "Fair enough…woman. But I wonder how long you will insist on 'treating me like shite' while you are in my home."

"Your home, eh? Nice place. Almost as nice as the mess you caused to mine a month ago."

"You are from the Opera then," he said, uneasily realizing that she had managed to avoid his question with barely an effort. She should not be so coherent this close to death. She should be raving, in denial, sobbing, clinging to the comforting shoulders of a loved one. She should not be resigned, crass, uncaring…she should not be like him.

"In a sense…yes."

"Why did I never know of you then? And why did I never know of how you received your injury? That is an old wound, and a serious one."

Her lip curled up unpleasantly. "Oh, you wouldn't have any reason to know who I am. But I daresay you do know how I got my injury. It was quite a spectacular disaster really. The doctors say that they were surprised the piece of glass didn't cut my entire head off when it fell from the ceiling."

The world froze. He was distinctly aware that his legs had buckled and he sat down heavily in a nearby chair. Every single thought that had been running through his head focused into the single word to escape his lips. "No…"

She coughed again, the sound rattling nastily in her throat. "As I said, Phantom, after nearly being killed by that blasted chandelier…I want a properly dramatic death."

* * *

"Do you know what you're thinking right now?" 

His world was cold, amorphous, as her grotesque visage swam into view. "How would you presume to know?" he said. _I did this…I caused this death and despair, that's all I ever do…_

"You're thinking that you want nothing more than to run, to run far, far away from this. In lieu of that, you'll settle for crawling into a dark corner and hiding there until the merciful end of your life." Her bitter tone softened. "You weren't supposed to find me. I would have died quite happily in my dark corner, to be found by the next halfwit stagehand who visited the costume room. Nondescript clothes, unrecognizable face…nothing but a name and a flattering photo to identify me. They'd bury me with dignity…the unknown lady who suffered some horrendous fate in the bowels of the cellars. Yet another reason for them to be glad that you're gone and stay out of your bloody cellars forever. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

How quickly their roles had changed! With the gut-wrenching revelation that _he_ in fact was responsible for this monstrosity, the menacing Phantom who terrorized those around him became a trembling man who took his scathing reprimand in silence. His cynicism, however, had not left. "Woman, I find it hard to believe that you would have organized your death for my benefit."

"Oh no, not at all. I hated you with the fire of a thousand suns. I had wanted to join that mob that descended into the cellars to murder you. But weakened to the point of death, I settled for dragging myself into your basements and dying there just to spite you, just to make you see…" She shook her head, her stringy hair flying. "But then you found me. And to my unending bafflement, you brought me here and are trying to do what you can to prolong my life."

He looked down suddenly and noticed that the towel had found its way into his hands and he was dripping cool water onto her forehead. _When had that happened_?

"Are you a doctor, Phantom?"

"Among other things," he muttered.

"Is that what this is then? A clinical obligation to soothe your guilty conscience?"

He glared at her, furious that she purported to see through him so easily, furious that he wasn't cowing her into submission with a scathing denial, furious that she was right. "I thought you considered me a heartless monster."

She blinked. "I never said that. I said that I hated you. A monster isn't worthy of hate, simply contempt."

He was rendered momentarily speechless, unsure of whether she had just cursed him or complimented him. "You should not have to die alone," he said stiffly.

She tried to smile again and grimaced. The pain in her badly-stitched wound had obviously grown too great for simple movement. "How noble of you, Phantom. But if it's guilt that you're trying to assuage, then sitting by my side until I slip silently into that not-so-good night isn't enough. After all, it's not like you have anything better to do."

She paused, waiting for his reaction, but he was already too accustomed to her shocking bluntness to react.

"If it is guilt, then I will ask a boon of you. Your ear…and your honesty until either I keel over or am rendered dumb. The disease seems quite happy just eating my bloody face off for the moment, but I've no doubt that it'll eventually go after my brain locked up in my skull."

"I…am a poor choice of a shoulder to cry on."

The fire in her eyes nearly made him shrink back in his chair. _Honestly, what is wrong with me?_

"This is a deathbed confession, Phantom, not some sniveling attempt to right things in what little is left of my life. You will listen, and you will answer whatever I may ask. My forgiveness for a scrap of your soul. Surely that seems a generous…trade?"

He stared at her. _What makes her think I am human enough for her forgiveness to be worth anything to me?_ He knew almost before he finished his thought. She was present during that performance of _Don Juan_. Surely she had seen him tear his heart from his chest when he asked Christi— No! NO! He would not think of her, not now. _I do owe her…and she asks so little of me, and there is so little of a soul to give…_

He nodded. "Very well."

"Good. Then take off your mask, Phantom."

* * *

A/N: I have quasi-poached a line from Dylan Thomas' "Do No Go Gentle Into That Good Night", the only palatable villanelle to exist. I have chosen to let the fact that Thomas wasn't born until the 20th century remain a moot point. 


	3. Delirium

**Chapter 3**

"WHAT?"

"Your mask, Phantom. I want to speak with you face…to face."

He half-opened his mouth before realizing that any protest he might have given would have been laughable. His hands seemed to move of their own accord to untie the knot behind his head and peeled the pieces of cloth from his face. "As you wish."

He winced as the cold cellar air struck his skin. He didn't want to look into her eyes, didn't want to see her reaction.

"I can't see what the big fuss was about: Even the doctors were able to look upon my mug until about two weeks ago, and you're certainly prettier than I was then."

He nearly laughed aloud. Everything about the current conversation reeked of impossibility. "With all due respect, woman, your face is a terrible, tragic accident, not a supernatural curse from birth."

She scoffed. "Don't flatter yourself, Phantom. You're just ugly. We're both ugly. Even without these faces…we would both still be ugly."

"And what reason, pray tell, would you have for thinking yourself hideous before?"

"Society is not as blind as you may think, Phantom. They are quite able to look past exterior appearances, even a pretty face, when it pleases them to do so. They like to condemn, you see…they don't need to look past your face to condemn you, but they were happy to do so for me."

She closed her eyes and fell still, so still for a moment that an involuntary flash of panic gripped him. Then she opened her eyes, and when she spoke again, her tone of voice had changed.

"I was born in Ireland. My parents and I fled the country during a famine and managed to plead, beg, and steal our passage on a ship to the Continent. They died on the journey, and so, alone, I made my way to Paris. For years, I wandered and I learned the language. The Opera House happened almost by accident. They had auditions, and I needed money. You should have seen them stare as I entered the room. I was too thin, too tall, and much too pale, I looked like a ghost compared to them. Not to mention that I had a horrendous accent. But I was a pretty face, and I was told that I could sing. So I was offered a position in the chorus."

He was listening, truly listening, so intently that he almost forgot to ask when she had auditioned and to wonder why he had never seen her. He thought about it, but she had asked for his ear, not his words.

"The next few years were idyllic. I could never afford to love anything before then, so I felt that I was making up for lost time. Music became my entire existence. It was my true love; I lived it and I breathed it.

"Then a little later, _he_ arrived and I had another love in my life. He was a nobleman. He had quite a reputation with the ladies, I was told, but I paid the gossipers no heed. After all, they never saw us together; they never saw how the two of us created a world all to our own. They never heard him promise to me how he would give up everything to marry me, that he would leave his life and his station behind, and we would begin again together. He promised me this every single day until the day he left."

She took a deep, rattling breath and continued. "It was a stupid, freakish accident. The carriage driver was drunk and he was walking along the wrong road at the wrong time. He was killed instantly, the papers said. So he was gone, and after the grief had torn me apart to its satisfaction, I realized that I would never know if he had been telling the truth. I would never know if he had meant everything he said, or if he meant to leave me after he was finished with his conquest, as everyone had said he would.

"The details certainly didn't matter to everyone else after my pregnancy became public. All they cared about was that the nobleman's slut was living in disgrace, disgrace that grew into condemnation when I gave birth to a stillborn. I was cursed, they agreed. What else could cause the mother's cord to wrap three times around the child's throat as he emerged from her life-giving womb, strangling him as neatly as if he had been hung from a tree?"

He dipped his head down until his chin met his chest, wanting nothing more than to burrow inside himself and disappear. He felt suddenly sick; the Punjab lasso within his cloak hung like a filthy, greasy thing.

He looked up to see her watching him wordlessly. _It had been so simple. There had been no fireworks, no extravagant words…and she had managed to punch through my defenses like they were flimsy curtains of parchment. No wonder I never cared to be around other people._ He clenched his jaw, determined to hear the rest of her story. He had promised, after all.

If she had noticed his inner struggle, she gave no indication. "My Opera career was over after that, of course. I was tainted, as neatly as if God had drawn the mark on my forehead himself. I couldn't stay away though, I loved it too much…I'm sure you understand." He glared at her and said nothing. "I returned as a maid. As long as I kept my head down and my hair in a bonnet, my former _friends_ were none the wiser. So I faded into the background, a true ghost at last.

"And then came that night when you unraveled your little game onstage. I was backstage, a humble, anonymous figure, waiting until the show was finished so I could sweep in and pick up the pieces. I saw the entire performance, of course; I don't think there was ever such a captive audience in the Opera as there was that night. When the chandelier crashed down and the people screamed all around me, I almost forgot to move, and then, I felt as if my entire being had been split open. The doctors that they could spare stitched me up as well as they could. But when the stitches broke two weeks ago, they couldn't be bothered anymore. There were countless other injured…other more _important_ people wounded. I finally redid the stitching myself— an abhorrently sloppy job, I'm sure, if the godawful pain is any indication. I almost lost my tongue in the process…something you would not have mourned, I'm sure." And here she threw him a bitter grin.

His own tongue wasn't quite working properly at the moment. His words stumbled as they flew out of his mouth, tripping over each other as they struggled from his lips with considerable effort. "I do not see how you could possibly think of yourself as hideous because of what happened to you. _Nothing_ that happened was your fault."

She opened her mouth, and he knew that she was about to sneer at his attempt at pity. He stopped her. "You asked for my…honesty. And I have given it to you."

She pursed her lips. "Wasting away in the cellars like a ghost has certainly increased your sympathy towards others. Or maybe you are simply too afraid now to say anything that could possibly offend."

He sucked in a deep breath of air. "If I could apologize, Madame, I would. But there is nothing that I could say, is there? Nothing that can take back the fact that I was truly mad, yes; that I couldn't settle for less than destroying my world and that I laughed as I did so."

She leaned back upon the pillows, eyes sliding half-closed, almost comfortable. "Tell me about her."

He didn't know why the words tumbled out of him like water, or why he felt compelled to tell everything to this woman that even now he wasn't sure was quite real. "All that I wanted to do was possess her. She had everything, the voice that could make angels weep, and she was so innocent, so pure. Could you blame someone like me for wanting to own something so beautiful? I had spent my entire life searching for beauty and I had finally found the perfect specimen. And the most incredible thing was that she _wanted_ it. Wanted to feel the helpless yearning, the involuntary bliss seeping into every pore of her being…wanted to be closer to the force that moved her, that brought her to true _life_. To be closer to me."

He lifted his head to face her, feeling rather like he had just leaped from a precipice. She was looking back at him almost bemusedly. "I see, Phantom. That was most enlightening. Maybe in your next monologue you will be able to find the courage to admit that you love her."

He felt his features shift into the much more comfortable and familiar expression of a glare.

"You speak such pretty words, Phantom. _Don Juan_ was breathtakingly beautiful. If it had merely been an opera, it would have been a work of art, but I have a feeling that it was a cry for help."

Somewhere during his painful confession, he had lost all strength and desire to launch a sharp retort. At her next question, he felt himself shrink even further into himself.

"Did she love you as well? No—wait, I don't want to hear your response, I can predict it. You will say that she couldn't possibly have loved you. That it was merely pity or curiosity that motivated her to return even after she saw the ugliness within you. You will tell yourself this and a thousand more excuses to avoid the truth that you are afraid to know."

"Obviously you believe that you know my mind better than I do. Therefore I don't understand why you still require anything from me." He said this in the nastiest tone he could muster. He said anything to hide his fear from her.

"I never understood why…or if my nobleman ever loved me, and I never will. Sometimes I feel as if my mind will explode with all of the unanswered questions that I must bear, yet I wouldn't give up the memories for anything. But to actually admit that I've succumbed to such insipid weakness…well, it should not surprise you that only the thought of my impending demise is prompting such a confession from me. You will understand, I'm sure, when I say that it is much easier simply hiding away, cutting yourself off from any reminders, until you start to fool even yourself that the reality never existed."

"Woman, is this a confession or an interrogation?" he demanded.

"I made no accusations, Phantom. You have made the connections yourself."

Frustrated at last beyond belief, he flung the towel down into the bowl at her side. There was a clatter and the sound of water splashing against stone as the ensemble fell to the ground. She didn't move. "What is this, Madame? Some manner of sick game that you feel uninhibited to play, as I am unable to threaten you with death? You asked for my honesty, and yet you seem to want nothing more than to crawl inside my head like an insidious infection and _tell_ me how I feel."

"Tell me truly then, Phantom. If I asked you of your feelings, would you be able to tell me?"

The bowl smashed against a wall, the remaining water dripping darkly down the stone like blood. "What do you want, woman? With all your meddlesome questions and maddening truths, what exactly is it that you _want?_!"

"What any dying person wants: Peace. Forgiveness might be nice, too, but God usually can't be bothered." She shuddered as her body convulsed around another hacking cough, but the sound was trapped in a painful gasp.

Before he could think of what he was doing, his hands were supporting her back and shoulders, straightening her body, clearing her airway. She swallowed a great gulp of air and then turned her head to stare into his eyes, what remained of her jaw strangely rigid. He gave a great start when he saw what was in her eyes.

Fear. Of course. With any other person, even with _her_, he would not have given it a second thought. He had come to expect it, after all. But the thought that this being, who did not fear death, would still fear him dug sharply into his chest. With a deftness borne of a lifetime of grace and stealth, he slipped his arms out from around her so quickly that they might have never been there at all.

"Take your peace, and be done with it, woman. I am doing nothing to dissuade. It is you who insists on carrying on this conversation."

Whatever anxiety that he had glimpsed in her eyes was gone, so quickly as to have never existed. "Oh Phantom, you truly believe yourself to be so irrevocably separate from your fellow creatures? There is no peace for a moment whilst you remain at my side. Your anguish practically screams from every pore of your being, and since I know now that you will not leave my side until I am gone, I seem to have no other choice than to continue this conversation."

"Why? _Why_ is my personal well-being suddenly so bloody important to you?"

She coughed again: the sound was raw and loud this time, and her hand came away from her mouth stained crimson. Automatically, he moved forward to take her hand.

He was quite conscious of her eyes boring into his forehead. "Should it not be me asking you that question?"

He took a deep breath and forced himself to lift his head and once again look into her eyes. There was no fear this time, merely a humble sadness.

"I am concerned for you, Phantom, because you are in pain. I have seen too much of it in my lifetime. And as a human, I do not wish to see it burdening another, regardless of what they may have done to me in the past."

"Then, Madame, you are a better human than I."

"Am I?" She reached down and picked up a piece of newsprint from the floor. It was one of several dozen littering the ground. Every one of the pages was smeared with traces of wax for they had been used to wrap the candles.

This particular paper was worn and dusty and showed signs of being folded and refolded multiple times. In the center was a photo of a smiling Vicomte and Vicomtess de Chagny in front of a church.

"You let her go; only the very best of humans could have done such a thing. And you cared for me, even when I was nothing but an insignificant intruder. Monsieur, you have learned. Slowly but surely, you have learned."

She coughed again and crimson droplets dripped from between her trembling fingers.

* * *

A/N: Only one more chapter to go after this! Thanks to everyone who's stayed with this so far, it's been a fun journey. And of course, all shall be revealed in the final installment and not before, bwhaha.


	4. Revelation

**Chapter 4**

He reached aimlessly for another sheet of newsprint and crumpled it, holding it under her chin to catch the flow of blood. A crimson stain spread across the headline: _The Irish Times_. She grimaced as his hand approached her throat.

"I'm not going to hurt you!" he snapped. _Is my touch truly so death-like, so menacing?_

She rolled her gaze in his direction, a dull sheen across her green eyes. "I'm not afraid of you, Phantom, you just seem so afraid of me."

"Don't be ridiculous," he hissed. His hands trembled as they wiped her mottled chin clean.

"It is only death, monsieur, just a little death. But there's no need for fear. You won't die down here. You don't _want_ to die down here."

"And how could you possibly know that?" he said, filled with dread.

"It's not your _style_. You who crashed the masquerade ball and disappeared in a flash of smoke, you who declared your love onstage before the full audience, you who gleefully caused so much death with a chandelier crashing down in flames…you would not die alone in the scary basement. It's not _dramatic_ enough."

"Theresa…Theresa…I beg your forgiveness, _please_…"

"Why do you ask it of Theresa? You already know; you _must_ know by now, that I am not all that I seem."

He laid a hand on her ravaged cheek for the first time, trying to ignore how it trembled beneath his touch. Misshapen though it was, the skin was dry and still warm. "_This_ is real…this body, this woman is real. This suffering is real."

He moved his hand in a gentle caress, feeling the shape of a bowed cheekbone beneath his fingers, sensing how the trembling eventually slowed and stopped. Then the face convulsed and the lips jerked open, desperately sucking air into a collapsing windpipe.

"_Erik_…go, you don't belong here. Not with _this_. Not with me," she gasped, sweating from the effort of her words. "Go."

Her eyes widened then and froze in her head as her throat seized, her ribcage expanding and contracting around useless lungs.

Erik gave a great cry. "No!"

He bent over her and was pushing against her chest with punishing force as her silent eyes gazed back at him in befuddlement. _Live, damn you! I will not let you die…_

His efforts were useless; her lungs had completely collapsed. _Do I dare? Can these death-like lips truly grant another the breath of life_? He bent over, bringing his awful face close to hers…

Sharp stinging pain brought tears to his eyes as his lips and what remained of his nose crashed against something rigid and unyielding.

Cursing, he waited for his blurry vision to clear. It did. He froze. His disbelieving eyes took in the sight of the snug metal brace that wired the woman's mouth securely shut. The metalwork was lattice-like and bore a disturbing resemblance to a muzzle. A crimson stain glistened on a section of the metal. He drew a hand to his mouth and felt his cut lip.

Erik barely managed to grasp the edge of his abandoned chair as his legs seemed to collapse underneath him. He blinked, but the vision did not disappear. Rather, it began thrashing and flailing its arms, the stitches of her wound tearing her cheek. Erik came back to himself enough to see the blue tinge creeping into her ravaged skin.

He took a large gulp of air as if he were drowning and then reached forward. One hand cupped her chin almost tenderly as the other crushed the metal brace and lifted it like crumpled paper away from her face.

The chin in his hand went slack. Her jaw dropped open against useless tendons, and a sickening smell filled his nostrils. There was no tongue in her mouth.

The world seemed to twist before his eyes, and he turned his head away, feeling a terrifying wave of nausea rush through his body. His heart rose in his throat, leaving the sour taste of bile on his tongue.

_It was only a face…only an ugly face. A curse upon the most visible portion of our bodies that neither of us could have prevented. It so easily reduced both of us to less than human. How, _how _have we been condemned to ruin so easily?_

He didn't know, and he hoped that for the rest of what remained of his life that he never would know, for he was sure that the answer would destroy him. The only thing that he did know was that he was _not_ about to sit back and let it happen to another.

Erik bent over her and pressed his mouth to hers. He filled her with a breath of life and almost immediately felt her thrashing slacken. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the scent of death and decay, but he could see her lungs filling and he could see the awful blue color of her skin fading as he repeatedly moved from her mouth to her chest.

And in the deep recesses of his brain, in the same place where the smell of death and decay still lingered, he could feel the Angel of Death beating its wings futilely against a newly erected wall.

He didn't know how long he hovered by her side, breathing for her and pumping blood through her veins. It could have been hours; it could have been seconds. Time had no meaning as he nursed the scrap of life remaining in his hands.

However, Erik did feel when her hand crept forward to grasp his, staying him from beating away once again at her chest. The hand could barely remain closed around his, but it held him as fast as a chain. He looked down at her and he understood.

He looked into her eyes and read what she could not say, what she had never, in fact, said or had the capacity to say in his presence. _It is only a little death_…

And then she smiled at him. _She smiled at him!_ Her eyes appeared no longer to be green but reflected darkly of an unknown shade in the candlelight.

He held her as he imagined one might hold a shuddering lover: whispering comforting nothings into her ear, feeling her pulse tingling within the flesh of his hand, feeling her body twist then slacken in his grasp. Then she trembled soundlessly once more and was still.

The world blurred before his eyes, and for a moment he feared that he might discover that this had been another cruel vision. Then he looked down at the moisture that had fallen upon her rigid face and realized that he was weeping.

He reached forward and closed her eyes with his hand. She did not stir; she would never again draw away from him. Good Lord, what must this mysterious woman have thought as he had ranted at her for things that he was hearing only in his mind! He remembered the many instances when she seemed strangely silent, when her fear seemed to appear and disappear like magic…

Erik blinked and then looked again at her more intently. The body was real. As was the disease that had ravaged her face. Her voice…her words…he had only to look down at the crumpled mass of metal at his feet to realize that they could never have been real. And the locket?

He reached forward hesitantly, believing it wrong somehow now to touch her, as she had never been capable of granting him permission. He passed his hand over her still throat. Nothing. No locket, no picture, no name.

Erik began to laugh: It was a horrific, despairing noise, and he wiped at it through the tears that were falling more rapidly, as if he could wipe the sounds away along with the unfamiliar moisture from his eyes.

The infection…the infection had been in his mind the entire time.

What possible reason could he have had to put words into her pitiful, wired mouth? Why would he choose to imagine her saying…saying the things that he had needed to hear for so long now?

Why…for the same reason that he had deluded himself into thinking that he had cut himself off from the world. When in fact he collected his wax-smeared pieces of newspaper from the storerooms where they had been cast aside by the people above, and he treated them with as much reverence as if they had been sacred texts.

But no more. He could feel her hand rapidly cooling within his. Then he realized that her fingers were still rigidly interlocked with his. He looked down. Yes, this was genuine.

She had reached for him and held on to him for comfort as she had slipped into Death's embrace. It didn't matter that he had been able to do nothing except to offer comfort. It didn't matter that he had probably scared her terribly by shouting at her for reasons that only he could know.

He had been the last remaining bit of life that this nameless woman could see, and she had reached for him without hesitation. He gently extricated his hand from her rigid grasp and then lifted both hands to his own face, feeling the veins pulsing with life beneath his scarred skin.

_I thought that everything within me had died when she left_.

Then he heard her voice inside his head…at least what he had imagined her voice to be. And he realized now that her voice had been beautiful.

_You have learned. Slowly but surely, you have learned…_

The Angel of Death shook a furious fist from a deep recess of his mind. Erik told it plainly to go to hell.

_What the hell are you doing here?_

Erik felt something stirring within him, crawling uncomfortably underneath his skin like goose bumps threatening to break out. His eyes moved slowly about his lair. He had never realized just how dark it was. Before the mob destroyed his home, he'd had enough candles and stolen gas lamps to make the cavern burn as bright as day. Now he looked down and realized that it was difficult simply trying to make out the outline of his feet upon the floor.

He watched as glistening drops of wax dripped from the heads of candles, collecting and solidifying once again at their bases. He felt strangely hollow as he looked across the space that had been home for so long: the shattered mirrors, the twisted remains of the organ, ragged pieces of sheet music and newsprint, scraps of cloth and satin. It took him less time than he had predicted but by then, he realized that he had seen enough.

Erik bent over her body and kissed her forehead. He felt a chill as the ravaged skin sucked warmth from his touch. Then he stood and detached the cloak from his shoulders and spread it over her body. The garment enfolded her gently in its midnight embrace.

He stood upright again, feeling as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and not only in the literal sense. The Punjab lasso had been in the cloak, and he found that he could not summon up any desire to care.

"Theresa…" his voice was soft, smooth, with a musical quality that had not been there for four weeks. "Theresa…I realize that is not your name and that I shall never know your name. But that is who you are to me. That is what you have _meant_ to me. You are my _theros_…my summer, after my lifelong winter. I only wish that…that it had not required your death to save me. But if you can hear me, and forgive me…thank you. Do you know what I shall do now? I shall take you out of here with me; nothing remains here that befits even a corpse. I shall give you a Viking funeral…high above the rooftops of Paris. And if I hurry, you shall see the dawn, and you shall burn brighter than even the rising sun. After all…did you not want a properly dramatic death?"

Then he smiled for the first time that he could remember in so long. And although there was sadness in his smile, Erik felt something inside of him stir and come to life.

FIN

* * *

**A/N: First of all, a big and HUGE thank you to Le Chat Noir, my beta extraordinaire. Not only does she catch all my silly grammar mistakes, but without her, the ending would have been quite different.**

**Next, my eternal gratitude to all of you who had read, squee-d, reviewed, and even those of you who lurked and didn't review. I love you guys too. (But reviewing never hurt anyone :-P)**

**A few points about the story that may interest some of you:**

**The origin of the name "Theresa" is uncertain but the most popular theories both stem from Greek words. First, there is "theros" meaning "summer". Second, there is "therizo" meaning "to harvest". Obviously, I have chosen to use the former.**

**Technically gangrene is not contagious even after the person carrying it is dead, but that was not common medical knowledge in 19th century France.**

**Erik and "Theresa" have the same eye color.**

**The Phantom is never referred to as Erik until after "Theresa" calls his name. It is always "he" or "him". And the woman is never referred to as "Theresa" except when Erik calls her by that name. CTRL+F it, if you're curious.**

**Some of the more obscure clues and hints scattered about the story:**

**1) "Theresa" can speak, laugh, and shout. If gangrene was truly in its final stages, she would have had trouble simply breathing.**

**2) Erik could "tell" that her eyes were green from the photograph in the locket. But color photography was not invented until the 1940s.**


End file.
